I think it's a misnomer to think of capitalism and socialism, or objectivism, as solutions.
They are structures or perhaps models. They all fail because of people not doing what they're supposed to be doing. The only true solution would be a process that forces people to do what they're supposed to do.
And I don't see that happening... ever? Until the AI rules us at least.
Yeah. I find it weird that when people dream up the "best" social structure, it's often explained by a simple overarching philosophy. How convenient would it be that the entire complexity of human society can be ideally governed by a small set of principles?
It's always "only capitalism" or "only communism" or "no money" or "no government" or etc etc.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the optimal solution isn't based purely on some philosophical idea about how things 'should' be (whatever 'should' even means!), but instead would be a pragmatic, adaptive solution based on what actually happens and works on a case-by-case basis.
It would be a patchy, ugly system, compared to the perfect elegant algorithm people want. And indeed that's kind of what we have. We just gotta keep patching and amending. There are a lot of existing problems, but we have the framework for fixing them, and no doubt it is a difficult process. But to insist that the solution is to start over is naive and dismissive of the generations of sacrifice made to get to this point.
It's frustrating when people argue that all evil is because of capitalism, or that capitalism is purely good. Can't we just acknowledge that there are good and bad aspects of all systems, and work to boost the good parts and improve or attenuate the bad parts? And work in the good parts of other "competing" systems too? Yes, things don't have to be 100% pure capitalism or not. Hybrid solutions exist! That's basically what is happening, I just wish people would stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick.
It should be pretty obvious by now that Marx had (partly) the right diagnosis, but did not really have a clue about the cure. That's understandable though. It's easy to say what's wrong about society.. harder to predict which fixes will work.
I think the closest we can come to the socialist ideals, is to have a free market economy, but have the ownership of capital be more distributed.
The government can not efficiently control the economy directly, at least not without some powerful, yet-to-be-invented, AI. The beauty of the free market is that it's basically an enormously powerful computer which, given the right conditions (relatively fluid markets, lack of monopolies, etc.), calculates the correct prices for goods and services for an efficient economy. Not utilizing that computer, without some equally good replacement, is doomed to fail.
But the government (and by extension - in a decent democracy - the people) can be a responsible owner of capital. It requires some discipline, and low levels of corruption, but there are plenty of examples.
I do think less government involvement is a more ideal solution, but it requires better technology and better organization. I think the way going forward, is to create a harder separation between capital and income, create a system where capital more naturally tend to distribute evenly among people, and to improve the efficiency and quality of stock markets.
Like too much these days, the alternatives we've been provided are at the extremes. They seem to be offered less as viable solutions and more as tools for sorting people into one of two buckets.
So, we must be either communists or laissez faire capitalists without a hint of regulation.
But, of course real solutions--particularly to such macro scale challenges--are seldom found at the extremes.
If we could spark an earnest discussion about what a saner version of capitalism would look like, then we could find a solution, and relatively easily vs what our "manipulated" experience might suggest.
EDIT: looking at the responses, then rereading my comment, I realize I wasn't clear. What I was trying to say is the state of things is such that the solutions offered are characterized as communist, with the offered alternative being a form of laissez-faire economics, positioned as "standard" capitalism.
The problem with your thinking is that you ignore the fact that socialist policies have been implemented successfully in all modern western democracies and somehow those societies haven't shattered yet. It's called a "mixed economy" and you're living in one right now.
The idea that we have to construct a society based on idealistic absolutes is nonsense. Some problems are more efficiently solved collectively, others are better solved by the power of the market. Let's harness the power of both.
If the day comes when AI abruptly puts huge percentages of the population out of work and our society faces collapse, one can easily envision a solution that implements structural changes that incorporates both the benefits of market forces and the efficiencies of collective resource pooling.
I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be of this imagining.
Yes obviously pure capitalism is as shit as pure anything else, and no system made by humans, and made of humans, actually works very well to create sanity and fairness. So even not-pure capitalism creates all kinds of undesirable results, like available tech doesn't get used in ways that would be wonderful for everyone.
What solution to human nature have you imagined in your split second?
Definitely not the solution. Ending capitalism for some other form of economy is the only way in my opinion. Not that I don’t think people should be rewarded for the products and services they offer just that the incentive to make cheap shit and sell an upgrade every year is definitely harmful to our earth. The problem I see is I don’t know what type of economic solution there is that would fit.
It was a dumb idea to conect the social system to the economie…. But still a social system has a lots of benefits that are apparent if you once lives in the us and europe. What would be your solution for schooling, housing etc… just keep dumb people dying on the street because somehow the market will regulate it??
Edit: because even if the economie goes bad there are humans living there that need a certain baseline of living. In the capitalist world there is only taking more debt , cuttings and hope … if that doesnt work.. what then??
Adorno once said that one cant do right in the wrong world. Right can only be done in a right world.
Its hard to sustain socialism if its bound to capitalism
I agree with the problem analysis and I've read similar sentiments before here on HN for a while. However, I have yet to find an article that methodically explores the solution space, or even just suggests practically achievable improvements.
It would be said if we start to sound like Karl Marx, who provided well founded criticism of capitalism but was never able to come up with anything better.
Are you truly going to proclaim that we have explored all options for how to structure a global economy? We arrived where we are via a mix of self-interest and local optimization and it seems unlikely we have arrived at even a local maxima.
I'm not going to claim I have the solution. Anyone who tells you they do is either deluded or has something to sell you. And that definitely includes those who want you to believe that modern capitalism is the end-all be-all of society.
What I want is to stop the self-imposed helplessness. What are some things that might work? How can we validate them? How can we roll them out?
It's clear it doesn't work perfectly - depression rates in capitalist countries are very high, salaries are still a problem, even when GDP improves. The Communist revolution took off all over the world, but later everyone learned that communism isn't better.
All change takes time and energy.
I think we're still missing a great economic thinker who can try to solve it. We've put a lot of our energy into things like electronics, computer, medicine in the past century, because that's where all the big problems were.
It's likely someone will revise capitalism soon enough, especially given all the computing power we have to make models, and even the data that can be pulled from things like MMOs.
The problem with communism is that, in order to work, it requires a version of humans that would render communism redundant.
At least capitalism works with the nature of humans and proposes kind-of, sort-of okayish incentives. Unfortunately, you are right, ultimately no system will save us.
So part of the problem is their alternatives to capitalism. Which are mostly primitivist (as in, destroy infrastructure) communist (in the central planning, grey way depicted in i.e. The Dispossessed) or just kinda goofy. As a lifestyle choice, living off the refuse of a bloated and exorbitant society is actually quite sustainable until you need serious healthcare. As something for everybody to do, a new way of governing, it fails because there will be no society from which to absorb the waste. I think efforts to establish autonomous, non-hierarchal, consensus-based organizations or communities within capitalism is awesome. But ultimately, seven billion people are never going to form some totally sweet Zapatista-style worldwide commune. At that scale, the markets are going to be at work. Capitalism is inevitable.
My perspective is that appropriate solutions to this problem involve taxing externalities (pollution, murderous working conditions that cost society), and reducing the cronyism and corruption that breaks capitalism. Also deciding as a society that we are better off if people are not involuntarily homeless or hungry or dying and agreeing on a social contract to provide welfare.
I want to make the world a better place, so I choose to work on making more, better, cheaper, smarter education available to everyone everywhere. And from society's perspective, this is actually a good investment because it increases human capital and also reduces future costs (as educated folks have fewer kids).
I love communist farms and kibbutzim and I can absolutely imagine living on one and participating in one of those societies. And if you hate capitalism, that's a good way to protect yourself from it. But the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system.
Be careful with your terms there, communism and associated structures are rife with problems, ideal in theory only and all but impossible to implement using real-life humans.
I think we should start by re-evaluating capitalism (at some point in the next 500 years or so when we run out of steam on the current system), and then see what needs fixing rather than to throw caution to the wind and have a re-run of the 20th century.
Yep and the solution then is the same as it is now - democratizing the means of production and communication, insulating it from the influences of capital and profit. Socialism is the boring age-old answer to every one of these.
They are structures or perhaps models. They all fail because of people not doing what they're supposed to be doing. The only true solution would be a process that forces people to do what they're supposed to do.
And I don't see that happening... ever? Until the AI rules us at least.
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